According to Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence enterprises need to grow beyond the four walls of spreadsheets and start building data-warehouses in order to gain enterprise-wise transparency and a competitive edge.

1. BY INVITATION
Five golden rules for converting data
to decisions
According to Sanjay Mehta, CEO, MAIA Intelligence
enterprises need to grow beyond the four walls of
spreadsheets and start building data-warehouses
in order to gain enterprise-wise transparency and a
competitive edge
BUSINESS DYNAMICS CHANGES DRASTICALLY data. Enterprise-wide BI helps make training received by employees. Despite
in any industry—be it manufacturing, relevant data available more widely;
retail, telecom, pharmaceutical, whereby it helps business users take
healthcare or BFSI. There is decisions at the point of impact.
competition in every business.
Performance is the key to the success of Together, these three broad
any enterprise and performing well is advances are helping to create BI
not an option anymore. solutions that allow information
workers to make better-informed
Most enterprises have invested in decisions that are aligned with corporate
and implemented an Enterprise objectives. Decision making and
Resource Planning (ERP) solution and strategy formulation no longer rely
may now look upon pulling data from a solely on knowing what happened.
variety of sources and databases to Now, they can be supported by
create reports efficiently—to gain a comprehensive intelligence about
clear view of operations and to support what’s happening now and by
better decision making. extension, what is likely to happen.
It is vital for organizations to To ensure that the data can be
leverage their data assets to measure trusted, a solid data foundation must
their business performance, identify the first be established and aligned with the
weak spots and strategically improve master data.
their business to scale new heights. SANJAY MEHTA, CEO,
MAIA INTELLIGENCE
One of the most enduring traits of
Data remains one of our most the information age is that we have There is very little centralized
abundant yet under-utilized resources. focused too much on mastering control and no security controls on
Business Intelligence (BI) allows spreadsheet driven MIS reporting.
transaction data and not enough on Therefore, enterprises must unlock their
businesses to integrate this data from turning it into information and business application data to
disparate sources to provide deeper knowledge that can lead to business gain visibility using BI
insight and, by extension, greater results. The information systems in
competitive advantage. organizations gather zillions of bytes of our growing abilities to collect all of
data from business transactions in order this data, however, most of us are still
New interfaces and approaches to to serve operational or record keeping struggling to develop the very
BI are empowering decision makers by needs. We are awash in data on topics capabilities that prompted us to gather
providing relevant data within a user- ranging from customer purchases, data in the first place— the ability to
friendly interface. BI provides supplier payments, loan repayment aggregate, analyze, and use data to
additional levels of performance helping schedules, work hours by charge code make informed decisions that lead to
users gain real-time insight into their and the amount of education and action and generate real business value.
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2. BY INVITATION
I remember a quote of Theodore cultural, and strategic changes the enterprise which can create multiple
Roosevelt, “In any moment of decision, necessary to leverage their investments. versions of truthful data.
the best thing that you can do is the They lack the broad capabilities needed
right thing, the next best thing is the to perform high-level data-based A spreadsheet is not a secure,
wrong thing, and the worst thing that business analysis and the cultures, enterprise-wide BI and data analysis
you can do is nothing.” business processes, and performance tool. There is no control over data
measures needed to make and manipulation, security and
Let us now discuss what should be implement data-driven decisions. transparency.
remembered while in the process of
converting data to decisions. The Customers can start with end-user When you derive information from
following five points are the basic rules information requirements by conducting disparate, unconnected source systems,
for any corporate to follow for a formal poll asking about their there is a fair chance that the numbers
transforming its information into information requirements. This helps won’t align. As businesses grow more
knowledge. We call them the five provide end-users with means of complex and ever more digitized, we
golden rules for converting data to obtaining necessary business have seen an overwhelming
decisions. information. This can be a good start for proliferation of data streams. This
having a single version of the truth. becomes too much to handle, even for
Rule 1: Understand the goals diehard spreadsheet users. Consistent
and expected outcomes of information becomes commensurately
end-user information Rule 2: Remove spreadsheet more difficult to produce.
requirements based reporting
Rule 3: Establish a data
Take into account the reporting and Discourage the heavy usage of quality competency centre
analysis needs of all business users spreadsheets as a standard reporting
(executives) with the CXO and tool. If the data is non-transient—if it is Data quality is one of the key
managers. Data garnered should be that the data changes during the analysis components of any successful strategy
appropriate for all the business users and reporting timeframe and is used to convert data to decisions.
with correct and precise insights multiple times by many users and
whenever needed. groups for multiple decisions, the Poor data quality causes blurry
spreadsheets are most likely a poor management decisions. Establish a data
Although many organizations have choice for sharing and initiating actions quality competency center. Make sure
made significant investments in data and decisions. that the system with the data which has
collection and integration (through data an audit trail with referential integrity
warehouses and the like), it is rare that Educate business users to rely on a and data integrity is in place.
an enterprise can analyze and redeploy single source of truthful data. Forbid the
its accumulated data to actually drive use of spreadsheets in meetings and Data incurs operational expenses at
business performance. presentations. The wide spread use of each stage in its lifecycle, because it
spreadsheets across the enterprise can costs money to capture, compile,
Enterprises in many cases still do create multiple versions of truthful data. analyze, update and store (or discard).
not approach BI strategically, and thus Further, the spreadsheet is popular Yet it creates value only when it is used.
their BI requirements and capabilities among business users, especially among A good return on investment for data,
remain poorly understood. This is a the finance and accounting users. therefore, depends on it being both
significant barrier to having a clear Organizations too, allow the usage of economically managed and accessible
understanding of which areas of BI spreadsheets and promote their use for for decision making.
organizations may benefit from. simple reasons like little training being
required due to its familiarity. One of Data quality issues are some of the
Effective BI implementations the downsides of this approach is that hardest challenges to tackle in a
depend on tight collaboration between the company has to continually audit the company. Quite often, data quality
the business unit and the IT department. data and determine if there have been problems only occur at the enterprise
As a general rule, BI implementations mistakes or corrupted formulas. level, and not at the department or
are more successful when business units group that is responsible for the data.
become knowledgeable about available There is more to MIS than For example, the data that the call
technologies and capabilities, and then spreadsheets. Building a spreadsheet is center staff works with might look just
communicate their needs to IT. easy. Planning, executing, fine to them as does the data that the
collaborating, publishing secure data field sales organization works with. But
While companies have emphasized enterprise-wide is a different story. BI when you try to combine the two
important technology and data helps business users to rely on a single domains, you discover that both groups
infrastructure initiatives, they have source of truthful data by forbidding the have developed their own separate, and
virtually ignored the organizational, widespread use of spreadsheets across incompatible, conventions for
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3. BY INVITATION
documenting relationships and transactional application primarily BI is different to general IT projects
hierarchies between customers. meant for collecting data, and and necessarily requires a closeness of
engineered to save data. Conversely, BI business and IT relationships to be
Data quality emerges as users applications are engineered to retrieve effective. In most cases, outsourcing
create value from working with data. It data and data visualization. Having BI arrangements may not work and could
implies value to someone—it is not a only will not generate data and having be a reason for the failure of a BI
property that is intrinsic to the data ERP only, will not give actionable project.
itself. When nobody uses data, it has information.
zero value. In order to execute corporate Apart from that there are several
strategy, you need to know what’s Numerous enterprises have invested other issues in outsourcing the reporting
going on. To make data usable, it is in applications such as ERP, CRM, and analysis to a third party such as
eminently important to construct some SCM, HRM, etc. to automate the security in terms of financial data which
uniform and consistent structure that business transactions and processes of is market sensitive and there may be
houses the data—a data warehouse their operations. On the basis of their concerns over trusting an external
(DW) for making relevant and good business needs in their industry, provider with both producing this and
quality data available to the business organizations implement such solutions ensuring that it remains confidential
users. (SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle E- until market announcements are made.
Business Suite, PeopleSoft, JD This does not mean that the providers
Having good quality, readily Edwards, Siebel, Microsoft Navision, are unethical, just that companies may
accessible data is a tremendous asset. QAD MFG/PRO, RAMCO, Tally, etc.). not wish to take a chance in this area.
Turn bad data into better business The results through such
practices and monetize what this change implementations might be excellent Among others disadvantages in
is worth to the business. from a transaction management point of outsourcing BI, there are the
view and driving down the traditional complexities of data management, as
Poor data quality will most likely costs of managing daily business mentioned above there is the
result in low match accuracy and operations. These companies can now confidential nature of the insight BI
produce an unacceptable number of look to their investment in transaction offers. Given the ad-hoc capabilities of
false negative and false positive applications and the data captured as an BI, the business analysts must be in-
outcomes. asset to support performance house to perform sophisticated ad-hoc
management initiatives. analysis—people that are intimately
Rule 4: Unlock your familiar with business and play an
enterprise from the In an ERP system, if required, we active role in it.
transaction-based application can create 500 reports with whatever
for reporting needs manpower is needed, however, the Many a times, if BI initiatives are
question is how the business user will not working well, managers may
Your existing ERP, SCM, CRM, maneuver across these 500 reports from believe that they can fix the problem by
HRM and the like are best for recording a given menu which becomes too hiring an outsourcer that they expect
your transactions but not for the clumsy. On the contrary, with BI, 10 will do a better job at a lower cost. Here
generation of intelligent insight reports. fields in 1 cube, a maximum 550 reports the verdict is clear that most of the
Specialized reporting and analysis can be generated with all permutations organizations prefer in-house BI or MIS
applications can expose your business and combinations. There are a number competency.
users to altogether new and meaningful of possibilities with multiple
ways of viewing data and analyzing it. fields. Additionally, all these reports are Remember the golden rule of
Organizations, whether big or small, available with a do it yourself interface outsourcing—outsource only those
face lots of challenges in reporting and for a business user. things that are not a core business.
analysis of data. ERP is capable enough Business strategy formulation and
for transactional reporting but they face Rule 5: Get the analysis of feedback on its results must be a core
challenges when it comes to complex your data done in-house competency.■
analysis of data available from different
sources. These challenges are creating a Do not outsource reporting and
storm and a whole new set of analysis to a third party. It should be a
requirement sis emerging around the part of daily use and not just a quarterly http://www.expresscomputeronli
MIS and BI. Organizations have already or yearly report submitted by a third ne.com/20100607/expressintellig
spent on ERP and should start investing party. Develop and implement the ententerprise12.shtml
in BI. In fact BI is the next big thing reporting and analysis system in-house
after ERP. and roll-out the same for all the
business users of your enterprise.
Do not confuse between ERP with
BI. Both are different. ERP is a
34 EXPRESS INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE JUNE 2010